This weekend has been a wash for painting mainly because of sorting through several hundred battletech card game cards... there was enough to make 9 full decks with tons and tons more to spare. Anyway. With the cards covering the floor of my studio all week I only had time to start fiddling with one of the plastic victor models from the old citytech box. I liked the look of mech in the art and the metals however the sculptor on this one made some very... odd choices with the shoulders and pose. He's still got a ways to go with gap filling and I have to rebuild the shoulders and fix some details on the legs.

The Victor I've alwasy liked but I've never been a fan of his "I'm taking a dump pose". The shoulders on the pastic version are all sorts of crazy, almost looks like you have the arms switched. I guess whoever did the plastic was trying to emulate the round should that's sorta sunken in udner the armored collar and it just came out really weird.

Thanks for the pic, it'll help when I actually cut into that top part to get it fixed. The citytech stuff is better than hte 3rd ed stuff but it's still pretty odd. I'm not sure why the sculptor didn't just bring the arms in closer since several of the other mechs have their arms nearly attached to the hips. I'm also wondering why the left arm is so skinny and the armor plating on the forearm is so little comparatively.

I did get the victor all finished up and primed today. It'll probably still be a bit before he actually gets painted and it's a toss up between him and a marauder getting the same scheme as the previous ones but I am leaning a bit closer to him getting the gray-green. All in all I'm pretty happy with how the reposing and sculpting went and I think it'll be a useful addition to the plastics I've been working with.

a small update on the battletech stuff. I was distracted both over the weekend and last night working on some long needed terrain bits to eliminate another chunk of the unpainted table syndrome. Xeones and I also attempted to use some water putty to sculpt the base sections for the upcoming forest project. THat was a bust as the putty lost its adhesion to the plastic base as it dried and was far too brittle. I guess that means I'll be looking at using caulking instead unless I can find another option.

On the topic of mechs, I'm hoping to work up the Archer Wolf variant for the dragoons group eventually. When I get to it, I'll be removing the lower arms and constructing some pods similar to the madcat look to house the two large lasers I'll probably incorporate some hand like item into it to show that there is s still a hand actuator and lower arm but give a more mechanical and less awkward look.

I haven't forgotten about this little project Since the forecast has the weather being a bit nasty this week, I took a good bit of the time I would normally have used to finish up the painting project of the week this Saturday to finish the conversion and prep the Archer for painting and priming today. Since I also gave away my plastic warhammer in a charity auction over on Lords of the Battlefield a couple of weeks ago, I've also prepped one of the Warhammers Paulson sent me months ago. If all works out as I hope I'll have these guys finished by the end of this week or next finishing up my second lance and leaving one more before I move on to clan stuff. I'm also curious if anyone has any more info on the Archer Wolf variant that uses clan tech. I'm assuming it would fit with Wolf's Dragoons but it seems to only show up in a Record sheet and I don't have any info on the thing.

I'm liking the modifications to the Archer. Fairly soon I'll also have my own 3d printed version of the rifleman and warhammer that I can send you to paint. They'll be tweaked to be a couple MM taller so they fit in better with the current range as everything has had some major scale creep. Also it'll fix a couple things about the old models that drive me crazy from a hobby snob point of view, like the R/L arm thickness being differant.

I don't know if you saw this on LOTB but it has a simular archer which I like (it's NScale)

As far as background info, there were a couple suppliments put out for wolf dragoons so it may be one of those. A lot of the older materials had variant mech designs in them that were reprinted in the record sheet books but they may not be mentioned in the technical reouts.

The basic story was that the wolf drgoons were spies opperating as mercenaries,sent by the clans way ahead of their invasion. (Clan wolf specifically) They always had a mysterious source of mechs, the best pilots and fielded a number of very hard to find mechs that were more or less lost to the rest of the inner sphere.

Once the clans invaded they suddenly started fielding clan weaponry as it would no longer blow their cover, but at this point they'd basically broken away from the clans due to bad blood and were now truly opperating as mercs usually against the clans.

While all that fits in within the setting I always found that it felt like a bit of after the fact re-write, the dragoons always having a secret stash of stuff was always part of the setting from the beginning but that was in place years before the idea of the clans were even conceived. I remember at the time feeling so pissed off when it was revealed they they were double agents as they were basically the heroes of the clasiic 3025 setting. It felt really out of place and really tore down their image in the early setting, nowdays it's a meh point but at the time it was a very raw wound.

I'll take a look and see if there's anything in the mercs book, the original wolf's dragoon book is pre-clan so it wouldn't have it, but there may well be an updated version that I don't know about as I was out of the game for a long time. I stopped about the time that 3058 came out so there's a pretty big gap in my battletech library, a lot of books have also been revised multiple times. (I know they reprinted Solaris VII 4-5 times and the mechs in there are differant each time)

Edit:Battletech Wiki has this entry, there's some mention of it there, but not much detail for the Archer Wolf variant, other than it's fitted with clan tech and Jaime Wolf's archer's was presumed to have simular tech upgrades. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Archer

Last edited by paulson games on Mon Feb 24, 2014 9:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think I've seen that particular one. In looking them up I ran into a pic from MW4 that had a similar torso arrangement which I quite liked over the odd hands look. It also made more sense with the large lasers in the arms too.

I'll have to see, but after these guys the other two IS lances really only have the others you sent along with one or two of the old plastics so I think I'm set there but there might be something with the Clan stars.

Most of the back story I've seen already with the Dragoons, I was mostly curious about the Wolf variant of the Archer since there isn't anything around as to it's history which seems a bit odd.

I looked through the mercs 3055 book, not really any mechs in there just unit histories and their past contracts.

My thought is it's probably simular to the Yen' Lo Wang variant of the Centurion, it's probably a mech that appears in one of the novels and they wrote stats for. The Yen Lo appeared in the Stackpole novels fairly early on and in the record sheets but didn't get included in the technical readouts. I know they did a set of novels focused on the backstory of Jaime Wolf (legacy series?) as he drives an Archer it'd be likely it may have shown up there?

When they introduce custom mechs in the Novels they make sure that they'd be buildable under the rules, so any mech appearing in the novels can be given proper stats and played in the game. (with some flex on clan IS weapon mixing)

There's several Dragoon specific variants for other mechs as well, ones I can remember offhand are the Aniliator, Imp, Warhammer all have custom Dragoon versions. (these were pre-clan) The Marauder II was supposed to have been exclusively designed by them and adopted by the rest of the Inner Sphere (if I rememebr correctly)

I know that it's against standard core set rules, but one of the merc books or the solaris stuff has add-on rules for Franken-mechs which allow for intermixing componants of differant weight classes and IS/Clan tech so that if you play a campaign with salvage rules you can end up with really oddball mechs.

Hmmm... well I think I'm just going to paint it in epsilon colors since it does seem the archer Wolf WAS a dragoon variant.

I've also been trying to plan out the remainder of the lances and stars. I think I'll end up with 4 IS lances and 2 Clan Stars. The idea is that each IS lance is equal to about 5800 BV and each star is equal to around 11,900 BV. That way any IS lance can go against each other and have a relatively even value and each clan star can go against any combination of two IS lances. All of this is surprisingly difficult especially when you consider the rather limited selection of Mechs I've got and that I'm trying to limit the variants used to 3050 or before. The last IS lance and one of the clan stars requires a few purchases to finish out, but here they are:

and the second Star:Puma PrimePuma PrimeBlack Hawk ARyoken PrimeWarhawk Prime

That means I'll have to pick up a few mechs. I've an old resin and metal Ral Partha version of the Masakari, Daishi, Ryoken, and black hawk and the citytech plastics for the other black hawks and mad cats. That means I'll need to pick up two pumas, an awesome, and maybe a thunderbolt. I haven't decided if the thunderbolt I've got is really worth salvaging or if I should just pick up the new scuplt they have out.

EDIT:did some more finagling today to see if I could come up with something more intersting for the second lance. I think I like this a bit better:Fenris PrimeRyoken PrimeStooping Hawk CStooping Hawk CWarhawk Prime

The original thunderbolt mini is probably the worst out of all the old sculpts, the monkey arms look terrible and there's very little detail on it.

As you've gone through the process of salvaging all the other old plastic if you want to be super completionist go for it, otherwise use it for target practice with a BB gun.

I ordered a set of the dougram figures which is right around CBT scale and has a much better version of the thunderbolt, there's two in the set so I can spare one especially since I know he'll get a much nicer paint job than I'd do. I've also got extras of the alternate griffins and shadowhawks from the same set.

I'm not keen on mixing the newer IWM minis with the old 3025 sculpts,they clash a bit IMO and I think it'd look a bit out of place next to all the other classic designs. The Dougram models are a better sculpt but still the same design as the original thunderbolt.

Here's a modified version of those that was posted on LOTB, (clan thunderbolt bash on left)

Very tempting, I'll get in touch when I get closer to working up the 4th lance. About as far as I've gotten with the thunderbolt was hacking off his arm and trying to figure out what the heck to do before giving up and moving on to other mechs. Seeing that version you posted and comparing to the plastic one I have just makes me cry. I think I'm moving away from the "I'll get something usable out of these plastics if it's the last thing I do!" phase and more into the I'll get something out of these plastics if I can make it look good and if not I'll take the base and give it to another mech. Either way those will probably be some of the last mechs I get to painting since I want to do one of the Clan stars up and the black widows lance.

Looks like more battletech is in the wings. I've taken on a commission to do a lance of Lyran Alliance mechs in the colors of the 5th Lyran Guards. It's a bit of an odd combination of mechs with stuff like a Salamander, Thunder Hawk, Hauptmann, and King Crab. There in't any major pose conversions requested for this go round, but upon receiving the models yesterday I decided that the Salamander was just too awkward to stay in the default pose and since it seems that it's the only mech I'll need to do anything with, I did some minor reposing. Just a couple of bends at the ankle, knee, and hip to give it a bit more weighty feeling, a slight torso twist to make the pose more dynamic and a bend on the arms to make them more believable. I've already sent the image to the client so I figured I'd post here too.

In between waiting for washes and other bits to dry on the land speeders I'm painting up, I've been slowly working on a 3rd edition plastic thunderbolt mech. Well, it's finally done sans a bit of filing that has to wait for the GS to harden. Seeing what I started with and what I've got now, I'm pretty happy with the result. This one will be part of my ELH lance but It'll be a while before it gets painted. I still have conversions and patching to do on the other three mechs in the lance and some other projects to get done.